HOW THE INTERNET OF THINGS IS
POWERING THE RENEWABLE ENERGY INDUSTRY Luke Abercrombie*
Recent electricity outages in South Australia, combined with a renewed focus on environmental damage caused by fossil fuels, has meant the country’s energy reliability and generation sources are high on the news agenda.
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ome owners want a reliable energy source to ensure they don’t get a nasty surprise when the grid goes down, and power is a fundamental component of running any business. With no power, how can the retail and hospitality industries process transactions? How can hospitals and schools operate in the dark? How can supermarkets keep perishables cool? Australians have begun to think about what makes the electricity grid stable, why it fails and how new and emerging technologies present a solution. With its hot climate and abundance of sunlight and wind, plus enough space, modern infrastructure and a stable political system, Australia is the ideal location to drive renewable energy innovations. The Australian PV institute reports that, at the end of 2016, Australia had over 1.58 million PV installations, with a combined capacity of over 5.44 GW. We’ve also seen a move by utility companies to invest in clean energy to remain relevant in the future as they see the opportunity this presents. Renewable energy management and storage solutions have begun to cement their place as solutions to our energy woes, and this is largely driven by adoption of new technologies. Innovations like big data, analytics, machine learning, the Internet of Things and the cloud are all at the forefront of developments in engineering, IT and manufacturing — the energy industry is no exception, and the
20 ECD [ELECTRICAL+COMMS+DATA] - MAY/JUNE 2017
opportunity to leverage these functionalities is huge. Our homes are becoming smarter as the adoption of connected solutions and smart devices is on the rise. Home solutions that utilise the Internet of Things consist of devices and services that are connected to each other and to the internet and can automatically respond to preset instructions and be managed remotely with a smart device. Gartner states that by 2020, there will be over 25 billion connected things worldwide. In addition, its research on 10,000 respondents in the US, UK and Australia suggests that adoption rates for home monitoring are at 11% and for home automation or energy management at 9%. Connected home products range from smart locks and lights to voice-activated music players and sprinklers that water at optimal times. As our homes become smart technology-enabled, so should our energy systems. The Internet of Things is a game changer for the solar revolution. Major players and new entrants to the energy industry are utilising its capabilities to create solutions that are smarter, more efficient and easier to control. This means residential and commercial users save energy (meaning more money in the hip pocket) as their systems are optimised. Hardware solutions like battery storage will only go so far and, when new technology developments arise, end users will have to overhaul and upgrade their systems. Software (incorporating the
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